June 1, 2008

Around The Farm

The peacocks are still strutting their stuff. All of the peahens must not be setting. They are extremely vocal and active today. At feeding time I noticed all were down from their perches early. When the boys are competing for the courtship honors they can rough house more than usual.

One of the boys decided I was deserving of his attention.

Showers and storms began yesterday afternoon, lasting til the wee hours of the morning. We have been so blessed as to only have thunderstorms with the worst of the weather missing us. I don't mind the rains, just stress during the severe weather warnings. Those nights are sleepless and stressful.

The pigs are the only animal on the farm that like the rain. The day after the storms, they are doing what pigs do best, rooting around in the mud and mess.

Miss Piggy, one of our feeder pigs.

Surprisingly Olive had the new babies out and about this morning. I was able to grab the camera before Olive decided it was time to take the babies away. You can barely see the chicks. They blend well into the background. One chick is directly behind her tail, the other three are following thru the grass. Yeppers, the little brown spots, the ones you wouldn't have any clue to as what they were if I didn't point them out.

In the photo below, one chick is at her tail, one is by her right foot (it is a lighter yellow than the others), the other two are at the end of the white vinyl.

That is as close as I can get without her whisking them away to safety. As they grow and start mainstreaming with the flock, we are planning to catch the babies this year. We have had so many people want peachicks, we think we can tame a few to sell. Think is the key word. We will see if we can.

I told Jim we are going to have to prepare a few roosters for the pot. They have decided to roost on and sleep in the nest boxes. Which aggravates me to no end. They leave their calling cards and the eggs are dirtier than normal. It's time for them to go!

The hens are now offering a dozen a day. The one little egg in front is actually a banty egg. The hens are one of the few farm animals that do pay their own way. The eggs sell quickly at $1.50 a dozen. By selling what we don't use, it pays for a portion of the feed bill.